At Tennis Race for History (TRH), we're all clued into the buzz around Guillermo Vilas's recognition as the world’s top tennis player back in 1977, especially Eduardo Puppo’s dogged pursuit to clinch this acknowledgment from the ATP.

Guillermo Vilas was never officially crowned as world number one by the ATP for 1977 despite having a killer year, bagging seven straight titles and a total of 16 for the year, tying the historic record with Rod Laver and Ilie Nastase. This streak kicked off his record run of 46 straight wins across all surfaces, starting from Kitzbuhel 1977.

Eduardo Puppo, an Argentine journo and stats guru, has been relentless on this. He dug deep and argued that Vilas should’ve been ranked world number one in 1977, instead of number two after Jimmy Connors, based on a reevaluation of that year’s tournaments and points. Teaming up with Romanian historian Marian Ciulpan, Puppo compiled data and crunched the numbers, suggesting Vilas got shortchanged by the scoring system back then. According to Puppo, Vilas should've been number one as of September 22, 1975, and from January 5-18, 1976. Despite laying all the cards on the table with the ATP, the association hasn’t tweaked the official historical rankings. In 2023, there was a flicker of hope when the ATP seemed like it might revisit Vilas’s case for being recognized as world number one in 1977. Puppo and his squad brought new evidence and analyses to the table, sparking a media frenzy and stirring up conversations in the tennis community.

 

While there was a resurgence of interest and debate, to date, the ATP hasn’t officially changed Vilas’s historic ranking status. Puppo’s fight has spotlighted Vilas’s career and spurred a dialogue about how sports achievements are recorded and recognized, but hasn’t swayed the ATP to make an official change.

 

In the TRH scoring system, which aligns with the current ATP Ranking standards to objectively compare different tennis eras, Vilas overwhelmingly outperforms Jimmy Connors—scoring 13,600 points, grabbing 16 trophies, and notching 133 individual match wins against Connors’s 8,320 points, 8 trophies, and 69 wins.

  TRH ranking in 1977

 

 

The debate over whether the ATP should rethink its historical scoring systems to more accurately reflect comparisons across eras is complex and stirs plenty of debate. Here are the pros and cons of Puppo’s proposal backed by TRH rankings:

1. Historical Consistency vs. TRH Ranking: A strong point for revising historical rankings is precisely the consistency and fairness in comparing different eras.

2. Yet, changing rankings retrospectively could raise issues of historical integrity. Rankings were based on the rules of their time, and altering them could be seen as rewriting history, which is problematic from the standpoint of maintaining an accurate record of sports achievements.

3. The notion that certain players or tournaments might have been favored in the past isn’t far-fetched. Commercial interests, tennis geopolitics, and the influence of powerful stakeholders could have swayed how certain events and performances were valued.

4. It would be prudent for the ATP to consider this new historical classification to reconsider the data presented by Eduardo Puppo and rectify this historical injustice. Public pressure and the support of robust statistical arguments, like those presented by researchers like Puppo, could sway a reconsideration, although so far, the ATP has chosen to stick with its original records.

 

And to wrap up, here are some standout stats from Guillermo Vilas’s tennis career according to our records:

In the TRH rankings, he’s the 12th all-time great.

He’s 10th in the number of tournaments won.

He’s 6th in the number of matches won.

Focusing on clay courts:

In TRH rankings, he’s the 2nd all-time great.

He’s tied for 2nd in tournaments won.

He’s the top player in matches won.

 

 

And where he’s undeniably number one is in the tennis history of his homeland, Argentina.